How an ecommerce site increased online sales by 30% with just a few tweaks to their site

Dave McGeady, CEO of Wyldsson launched a new webstore over the last year. With sales showing an immediate drop they needed a solution to determine what went wrong in the site launch and how they could fix it. Here’s how they were able to increase webstore sales by over 30% using Hotjar analytics.  

Challenges

Wyldsson was very excited to launch their new webstore after months of design, development, and planning. When the webstore was brought live it was natural that they would expect conversion rates to increase. Unfortunately, the opposite happened and they had no idea why. As a startup, Dave needed to find answers quickly on what went wrong in their planning and how to build conversion rates back up, with the goal to increase sales. "It was very frustrating. We had spent the best part of a year and a ton of money building our shiny new store, and it wasn't delivering." Dave McGeady, CEO

How Hotjar Helped

After reviewing several tools, Wyldsoon installed Hotjar and started examining user interactions. Through the use of heatmaps and recordings, they were able to determine that users were having trouble logging into their accounts. They were also able to identify the problem areas and dropoff points when users were interacting with the checkout process. It became obvious that there was a step in the login process that, in hindsight, was annoying and confusing for customers who appeared frustrated and in turn left without buying.

Results

Once these glitches were identified, Dave reported changes to his team and their developer started working on them immediately. They then used Hotjar to monitor the outcome and continue testing.

Overall, they saw an immediate 30% increase in sales.

Changes included:

1. Browser specific issues: Some customers were having issues with the cart emptying when they went to checkout and the team couldn't figure out why. After reviewing a few hundred recordings they were able to confirm the issue was related to users viewing through Internet Explorer. They were then able to inform their developer to put together a patch. Future recordings proved this issue was resolved.

2. User accounts: When Wyldsson moved to their new site they had to make the decision to remove old customer accounts and start fresh. Despite their best attempts to let customers know this was forthcoming they found out (through recordings) that many people were trying to login with old passwords and getting frustrated when they did not work. This was a much bigger issue than was originally anticipated! Through the use of popups and additional messaging added to the site they were able to visibly see customers go through a much better journey and converting once again.

3. Logging in: Through the use of recordings Wyldsson also saw that customers were logging into their account before getting to the checkout; thus not allowing them to get back to the webstore and make a purchase. They never expected that customers would log in first and began referring to this path as “the loop of death!” This was fixed right away, however without the use of recordings they may never have been able to understand what was causing the decrease in sales.

Wyldsson Heatmap:

Results You Can Achieve Instantly

The way your users interact with your webstore can make or break your company sales. Instead of focusing on what you ‘think’ will work, feedback and analytics will give you the power to ‘know’ how your users are interacting with your site which, in turn, will help you make changes that ultimately increase your conversion rate. In Wyldsoon’s case, a few simple changes to their login procedure allowed them to increase their sales significantly.